Major diseases of the 21st century: from depression to allergies

2024 Author: James Gerald | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 14:00

Plague, cholera, smallpox, leprosy, typhus - these words, as if they came from the Middle Ages, are now nothing more than echoes of the past, and once these diseases destroyed cities and terrified the entire planet. Now, with vaccines and antibiotics, the fight against viruses is much easier, but it seems that humanity will not escape another pandemic.

What is the threat to the people of the new millennium? Here are the top five diseases of the 21st century.

Depression

For a long time, depression, like other nervous disorders, was not considered a disease at all, if you feel sad and don't want anything, you need to get distracted, pull yourself together - and everything will pass. However, this scheme does not work, because depression is a condition from which it is extremely difficult, and in most cases it is completely impossible to get out of it on your own.

123RF / dolgachov

The reasons, as a rule, include prolonged stress or serious illness, overwork and congenital neurochemical defects.

Love for life in people awakens, no matter how it sounds, fears - everyone is afraid of death, pain and loneliness, they want comfort and new impressions. Everyone, except those with depression - apathy and loss of love for life, caused by biochemical changes in the nervous system, internal conflict or psychological trauma. According to the international classification, this disease is divided into groups that can be combined: neurotic, reactive, endogenous, classical or latent, small or large, somatized and masked.

Another thing is that people do not hesitate to call depression depression anything, from a bad mood due to rudeness in the subway to sadness for a deceased pet. And it is not surprising, because a moral illness is often disguised as a physical one, and it is impossible to recognize it on your own. Depression can cause persistent headache and muscle pain, loss of appetite, insomnia, phobias, irregular heartbeats, neuralgia, sexual dysfunction, and even alcohol and drug addiction. If there is even the slightest suspicion of depression, consult a doctor - without professional help, it will not be possible to return the love of life, alas.

Osteochondrosis

It is believed that osteochondrosis is a fictitious pathology, because it is diagnosed to everyone over sixty. Of course, the changes in the state of the skeleton are real, but this is an age norm - like wrinkles, gray hair and lack of teeth. At first glance, there is nothing wrong with this - there are few elderly people who do not have aching bones. However, if you think about how "younger" osteochondrosis, the situation changes dramatically, and if you know what diseases it can lead to, it becomes really scary.

123RF / Antonio Guillem

The causes of osteochondrosis are improper posture, a sedentary lifestyle and excess weight, and its symptoms are a constant feeling of fatigue, pain in the neck, lower back and between the shoulder blades, dizziness, a crunch in the spine when moving, and sudden partial numbness of the arms or legs. As a rule, massages, therapeutic exercises, proper nutrition and an active lifestyle are recommended if the disease is still in its initial stage.

In the last stages, degenerative-dystrophic disease of the spine destroys the cartilaginous tissue of the intervertebral discs, deformed vertebrae and their processes squeeze the veins and arteries, and oxygen starvation of the brain and internal organs occurs. Here are just some of the consequences of osteochondrosis: snoring, aching teeth, tachycardia and arrhythmia, "backache", profuse sweating, paresis and even paralysis. Obviously, going to a doctor and timely diagnosis of osteochondrosis is exactly the case when the warned is armed.

Obesity

Doctors call obesity the plague of the 21st century, and most of the overweight people, contrary to popular belief, are not in the United States, but in Kuwait - 42.8% of the population. According to the latest data from Rospotrebnadzor, there are 284 obese people in Russia for every 100 thousand people - almost twice as many as in 2011. The problem is relevant for dozens of countries around the world, and doctors are concerned that the growing indicators are mainly associated with banal gluttony and lack of activity: now you don't even need to get up to get food, a call or a click is enough.

123RF / ximagination

In most cases, the body converts calories into adipose tissue if it consumes more than it consumes. But not everything is so simple: obesity can also be caused by malfunctioning of the pancreas, liver, intestines and genetic malfunctions.

The list of what causes excess fat itself is much longer: diabetes mellitus, heart attack, high blood pressure, joint problems, gallstones, insomnia, arthritis and cancer - not to mention the banal things like everyday inconveniences and low self-esteem.

Obesity is one of the five most common causes of death - nearly 3 million people die from being overweight every year, more than in car accidents. If this continues, by 2030, 51% of the world's population will suffer from obesity, and the chances are quite high: for example, the American Journal of Public Health cites research data that proves that it is very difficult for people with obesity to get back in shape - it only succeeds 1.2% women and 0.5% men.

Allergy

Different circumstances can cause a pathologically hostile reaction of the immune system to pollen, food and other completely harmless things. Poor nutrition, stress, inactivity, environmental changes, uncontrolled self-medication - all this provokes allergies in people even to substances that the body used to perceive calmly, therefore it is considered the scourge of our time. One of the most persistent myths about allergies is its dependence on genetics, but in fact, not the disease itself is inherited, but only a predisposition to it.

123RF / georgerudy

The main danger is that even allergy sufferers themselves consider their illness to be something of an annoying misunderstanding and do not realize what it can lead to. For example, hay fever, known as hay fever, is not even cured by many, although its seasonal attacks are fraught with complications - Quincke's edema, bronchial asthma and asphyxia, that is, suffocation. Simply put, if you sneeze from pollen for years and do not get treatment, you can die, but modern medicine has a wide range of remedies for allergies, including pollen, and a visit to the doctor will help you understand what, how and when to apply in each specific case.

Antihistamine tablets act on one of six allergy triggering substances and are used primarily for prophylactic treatment. However, during an exacerbation, it is necessary to influence the body where it is needed most - on the mucous membrane itself. A topical allergy spray (for example, Flixonase recently became over-the-counter) works on all six irritants and helps relieve symptoms of allergic rhinitis: itchy nose and eyes, sneezing, watery eyes, runny nose and nasal congestion. Such sprays can be used by both adults and children from 4 years old, the effect lasts for a day after one application, which can greatly make life easier.

Cancer

Oncology frightens, first of all, because it still remains incurable. Doctors can relieve symptoms, cut out metastases, provide palliative care, but still do not know the exact cause of cancer and how to permanently get rid of it. A person who is given such a diagnosis always experiences shock - this is justified, because cancer can affect anyone and in most cases it is found when the patient can no longer be saved. Cancer is the cause of every sixth death in the world according to the WHO for 2015, and according to forecasts, in the next 20 years, the number of cases will increase by 70%.

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In people with cancer, abnormal cells penetrate literally everywhere, spreading metastases throughout the body almost imperceptibly, which is why the disease is so difficult to recognize in its early stages. The most common types of cancer: lung, liver, colon and rectum, stomach and breast - the latter also affects men, but much less often than women. All this looks very gloomy, but in the cause of curing cancer, medicine is slowly but surely moving forward: technologies for combating metastases have been improved, new drugs have been invented, the benefits of vaccination against papillomavirus and hepatitis B have been proven.

All this data is just the tip of the iceberg, and people who are far from medicine know too little about cancer. Most of the cancer patients are in low- and middle-income countries, and only one in five has developed methods of disease control, medical and palliative care for people with cancer at the state level. But, of course, the main task of scientists all over the world is to create a cure for cancer, so that oncology ceases to be a sentence and turns into one of the diseases - serious, but still curable.